Table of contents for CGI in Fashion: Online Shopping & Design redefined:
- Digital twins and augmented reality: The future of online fashion retail?
- Cost efficiency through CGI: How digitalization is revolutionizing the fashion industry
- Technological advancements make CGI indispensable
- CGI Fashion Influencers
- Does CGI even know any limits?
- How Balenciaga uses CGI
- A look into the future: Digital fast fashion, games, films, marketing in social media
- FAQ
CGI in fashion and design - what possibilities are there? In fact, CGI opens up creative dimensions that were unthinkable a few years ago. Because fashion is now predominantly sold online. According to Statista, 41 percent of respondents in German-speaking countries purchase clothing predominantly or exclusively on the Internet, and the trend is rising.
So, an online shop is essential in fashion and design. And that's where CGI comes in: Photorealistic renderings compared to conventional product photography offer you the opportunity to impress your customers with a very special service.
3D Fashion Visualization
Digital twins and augmented reality: The future of online fashion retail?
Although you have the option of showing products from different sides, in different versions and on different models with product photography, the digital twin of your products can do even more:
- Your customers can see the garment on the model and rotate the model - an all-round view is no problem at all.
- Shop-the-Look? Let your customers combine items of clothing from your range with each other. Avatars can be dressed as required to see the effect of different items of clothing with each other.
- Different color? No problem at all. One click in the online shop is enough to change the color. Or the size. What is the effect of the blouse, the hoodie with dark hair and a darker complexion? Click, different model, same garment.
Since most accesses to online shops today take place from smartphones, you can assume that your customers have a camera at their disposal. Keyword AR, Mister Specs has been using it for quite a while: Why not simply offer your customers the opportunity to try on fashion via smartphone!
The camera integrated in every smartphone brings your customer to the display, a click in the online shop puts a sweater, jeans, sneakers, blouse or handbag over the clothing.
This is possible because a digital version of your collection exists. Every single garment is shown in a photorealistic way. Lovingly crafted 3D visualizations show every single seam in sharp detail. The surface of the products becomes almost tangible for your customers.
CGI Fashion Image
Cost efficiency through CGI: How digitalization is revolutionizing the fashion industry
CGI is cost-effective compared to conventional product photography. You don't need a location, no set, neither in-house nor rented outside.
You have no costs for models and photographers, are independent of scheduling. Light, weather conditions and other natural implications can't thwart your plans. The entire logistics are leaner. In addition, CGI is more predictable.
What the automotive industry has known for a long time has now arrived in fashion and design: If products are created digitally from start to finish (i.e., from conception and planning to development and marketing), this saves costs and time. The entire process becomes more predictable, which has a positive effect on efficiency.
Technological advancements make CGI indispensable
Actually, the use of CGI has been steadily increasing compared to traditional product photography in recent years. While realistic representation of fabrics, especially surface designs with CGI, consistent lighting, and texture posed challenges a few years ago, that's no longer an issue. The technological advancements are impressive, and so are the 3D visualizations in fashion and design.
You can see what's already possible in this area by looking at the Ikea catalog. While Ikea is all about interiors, furniture, and decor instead of fashion and design, textiles still play a significant role. In 2012, CGI accounted for 25 percent of the catalog (online). By 2017, according to Ikea, it was already 78 percent.
3D Fashion Rendering
CGI Fashion Influencers
In the fashion industry, digitalization has not only revolutionized commerce and design but has also significantly changed influencer marketing. Through the use of CGI (Computer Generated Imagery), digital personalities are now being created that can function as fashion influencers.
These CGI influencers are computer-generated figures who, much like their human counterparts, wear fashion, set trends, and have large followings on social networks. They are available 24/7, independent of real-world conditions, and can be tailored to specific target groups.
The difference between a traditional fashion influencer and a CGI influencer lies in their existence. While the traditional influencer is a living person, the CGI influencer is a virtual construct created by graphic designers and marketing specialists.
Despite their artificial nature, these digital influencers have the potential to set real fashion trends and promote brands in innovative ways. They fit perfectly into a world where online identities and experiences are becoming increasingly relevant and can be seen as the next stage in influencer marketing.
Not only can they seamlessly integrate into social media, but they also open doors to completely new business models. For example, fashion could be created for virtual worlds, computer games, or special online events. This opens up a wide range of possibilities for future business models and marketing strategies in the fashion world.
Does CGI even know any limits?
Almost everyone has known Mave since the release of their first single "Pandora's Box" at the end of January 2023. The four girls of the K-Pop band, namely Siu, Zena, Tyra, and Marty, look exactly as you would imagine the girls in K-Pop: perfect figure, breathtaking hair, always impressively styled. And the clothes! Patent leather, shiny metal, everything figure-hugging and yet incredibly plastic. Each piece is tailored to the girls' bodies.
Siu, Zena, Tyra, and Marty don't exist, at least not as real people of biological origin. The band is computer-generated. From the perfect pouty lips to the incredibly shiny hair to the provocative fashion, it's all CGI. Mave is design on the computer. Metaverse Entertainment, the company behind Mave, has never made a secret of this. Why does this work in the K-Pop scene?
It works because our viewing habits have changed. In social media, we are constantly exposed to images that somehow look "artificial". Filters ensure that what is not perfect looks perfect. What is important is not that it looks "real", but that the not always perfect reality is not visible. Can you really see whether there is a "real" person or "real" fashion behind the filter, or whether the carefully edited surface masks a grid?
How Balenciaga uses CGI
For the spring collection of Balenciaga, the entire collection by designer Demna Gvasalia was created on the computer. Product development using CGI - that works in fashion and design. The real existing garments, a total of 44 looks, were presented on the catwalk by a single model.
Is that really possible? Yes and no. 3D Fashion Visualization makes possible what is actually not possible. Because of course, different models walked for the collection. But in the run-up, the face of model Eliza Douglas had been digitized via 3D scan and created as a replica.
The digital twin of the model (the face) was projected onto the individual looks that walked across the catwalk in reality. Virtual and real elements merge. Basically, that's "just" a form of AR application.
A look into the future: Digital fast fashion, games, films, marketing in social media
Why should you stop at the currently possible applications? Start dreaming, get creative! Once your collections exist as a digital twin, there's so much more possible. Avatars, i.e. people created via CGI, in games, films, and various AR/VR applications want to be dressed. Is your target group active on social media? Maybe you've heard of Lil Miquela.
Miquela Sousa, known as Lil Miquela, has more than a million followers on Instagram and has already been hacked by a troll associated with the right-wing spectrum. She wears Prada at Milan Fashion Week and is otherwise not shy about fashion.
Only neither Lil Miquela nor the troll Bermuda exist as real people. Both are virtual influencers. Brud, the start-up behind Lil Miquela, has built a life for the computer-generated influencer that could actually take place.
Lil goes out in New York, meets celebrities from real life, learns to skate, drinks Matcha Latte. And is asked for beauty tips by her followers. Here, too, it is not clear at first whether it is a "real" influencer who heavily edits her pictures. Lil Miquela has a boyfriend, also a virtual influencer, also created by Brud.
Do you use social media for your marketing? CGI breaks the boundaries of your possibilities. In addition to your own virtual influencers who wear your fashion collections, collections that exist exclusively virtually are also conceivable.
Whether Prada paid Brud for Lil Miquela to wear Prada in Milan? The two companies don't reveal that. Perhaps a completely new business area is emerging in the fashion segment here.
3D Photo Set Fashion by Danthree Studio
